Aida: It happened completely by accident. I’ve always loved drawing and making things as a hobby and my parents are creative people but I’ve never really aspired to do it seriously until I went to art school in

University. The turning point was during my years in Junior College when, bogged down by the banality of exams and a stifling curriculum that barely leaves room for the imagination, I started drawing comics in a ‘Death by Common Tests’ series depicting the different tragic ‘ways to die’ after every test, as a kind of release or coping mechanism. The drawings were stick figures, they were absolutely terrible but it’s the work I’m most proud of to date. People started looking forward to them, even the teachers, after every paper because it gave them something to laugh about during stressful times. I remember how that gave me a bigger sense of accomplishment than getting straight A’s ever could. I realised two things that soon unintentionally became a common theme in my art: that magic and inspiration can be found anywhere, even in sadness or the sterile rigidity of the exam environment, and that I enjoy drawing about my problems more than actually solving them.

Georgina: I have always been drawn to the poetics of space and architecture. Sometimes when I pass bycertain architecture, I catch myself daydreaming of the spaces behind its walls… I’ll dream about the materiality and the secret life of the objects within the space, wonder whether the lighting in the space creates the perfect tension between light and shadow, think about who are the owners are and the kind of lives they live… Pursuing a career in Architecture allows me to be a part of, and create that poetry. More poignantly, I appreciate how Architecture is a primary tool to understand the world we live in. Through its history, Architecture is both poetic and political, and I find it very intriguing that Architecture can be both a solution to social issues and at the same time, an unending rhetoric that questions our existence.

Aida: It took a while to find my footing after graduating. Being self-employed, or as I like to call it, f(un)-employed, your path, its shape and directions, twists and bends, are completely up to you to define. As exciting as that sounds, it also means that you’re absolutely responsible and accountable for every step you decide to take, for every morning you decide to sleep in instead of getting up to work, for every job you turn down to make time for a personal project. Besides finding your own system or framework to work comfortably within, you have to make that sustainable. People always talk about the starving artist, that passion will feed your soul but not your tummy. You’d be surprised at how many artists themselves feed (ha!) this mentality by playing the stereotype. But I disagree because I’ve learnt that you could dream big, work hard and work smart all at once. Of course it took a lot of stumbling and fumbling around in the dark for me to get to that conclusion, and I will fall a hundred more times still in pursuit of my dreams, but what makes the difference is that you have to want to do it more than you are afraid of it.

Georgina: As much as it is a stereotype, I’m sure all design students can attest to that sleep deprivation and deadlines are challenges that we face! I believe it all boils down to the fact that Design is not a linear/static process and that there is no definitive right or wrong, but a personal process of refining one’s ideas/concept. It’s pretty much about creating a beautiful imperfection. With work, real responsibilities come into play like codes and regulation and the challenge is to find the balance between retaining autonomy over your design vs. complying with the codes and regulations. I often find delightful designs to have successfully blurred the line between these two.

Aida: I must be wildly ignorant because I’ve not realised that it is a ‘male-dominated industry’ until I’ve encountered this question. I must have tackled the challenges that come with it by being blissfully

unaware of this fact. If you create great, earnest and sincere work then I do believe that its brilliance will shine through regardless of your background and even seniority in the industry.

The thing about art is that despite the gender-biases or barriers that may exist in its distribution, appreciation or other formal processes, at the heart of it there is a whole lot of human-ness in art that goes beyond the physicality of the being, uniting the human experience and celebrating its diversity, rather than marking our differences.

Georgina: Up till this point, I believe most of the challenges I’ve faced are experience affected (or lack thereof) more than gender biases… It’s a complete stereotype to say that men are better at the rough and technical aspects of Architecture while women are better at the softer aspects such as interior designs and attention to the details, although there may be a tiny sliver of truth in that. That having said, I do recognise that both sexes have different strengths and weakness and bring different sensitivities and sensibilities to a project.

Aida: I wish I could name someone noble and glamorous but there isn’t really a single public figure that I try to emulate or look up to. I guess I have passing muses depending on the corners of the Internet I get hopelessly sucked into, and just last week, I’ve been rather obsessed with Simone Giertz, the ‘queen of shitty robots,’ after stumbling upon her videos on YouTube. She’s a robotics geek who invents dysfunctional and well-meaning but badly-made robots that fail to make simple everyday tasks easier. But they definitely make everyday tasks more playful and fun. I really admire people who do silly things so seriously. When you have a sense of humour it allows you to make light of failure, or like in Simone’s case, even make failure your expertise. If you do failure so unapologetically and undeniably well, people cannot fault you for it. I think that’s important because as we become more experienced we tend to forget the pure joy of playing and creating and the kind of fearless imagination we used to have as kids, uninhibited by rules and how things ‘should’ work.

Georgina: Marina Abramović. I am inspired by how her Art continually questions and explores the human condition and blurs the boundary between audience and performance. Beyond beautiful aesthetics, I appreciate the discourse behind her installations. Her mind and body is her Art, and her dedication to her craft is moving. She once said of her Art “I was prepare to die”.

Aida: Fake it till you make it.

Georgina: Feel everything deeply. Invest in your passion, because it’s what saves you from the world.

Aida: My Sanrio McDonald’s Happy Meal watches. They cost less than five dollars and have stopped working five years ago. But they’re so fun I wear them every day still.

Georgina: My personal style aesthetic to gravitates to classic pieces with subtle, exciting and almost architectural details. As architect Mies Van Der Rohe said “God is in the details.” It would definitely be a monochromatic piece with a structural silhouette… think of the likes of Jacquemeus, Low Classic and Céline by Phoebe Philo.